Kenya, Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Granta has a great piece by Ngugi wa Thiong’o on the situation in Kenya.
The dance of absurdity became a dance of death. Government agents shot at marchers, while allies of the opposition went about ethnic cleansing with impunity. Others destroyed property in an orgy of nihilistic fury. The image of a child hurled into the flames of a burning church while attempting to run away is indicative of Kenya’s plague of poor-on-poor violence, stoked by a hard-hearted middle class that advocates regional ethnic cleansing while enjoying a cosmopolitan lifestyle in gated city residences, purified of the poor except those who come to serve.
What has unfolded is rooted in the colonial past of an uneven geographic and social development, a legacy of British settler rule from 1895 to 1963. Regions near and around hubs of capitalist activity gained from the fallout; those removed from the concentration gained less and less in proportion to their distance from the towns and cities. Kenya’s regions coincide largely with its ethnic communities, hence the regional disparities in visible development. But every pillar of progress, in whatever region, stands on mass poverty – what a politician once described as a state of a few millionaires on the shoulders of millions of beggars. The recent conflict also speaks of the failures of post-colonial governments to meet these challenges.
thanks Moorish Girl for the link
The dance of absurdity became a dance of death. Government agents shot at marchers, while allies of the opposition went about ethnic cleansing with impunity. Others destroyed property in an orgy of nihilistic fury. The image of a child hurled into the flames of a burning church while attempting to run away is indicative of Kenya’s plague of poor-on-poor violence, stoked by a hard-hearted middle class that advocates regional ethnic cleansing while enjoying a cosmopolitan lifestyle in gated city residences, purified of the poor except those who come to serve.
What has unfolded is rooted in the colonial past of an uneven geographic and social development, a legacy of British settler rule from 1895 to 1963. Regions near and around hubs of capitalist activity gained from the fallout; those removed from the concentration gained less and less in proportion to their distance from the towns and cities. Kenya’s regions coincide largely with its ethnic communities, hence the regional disparities in visible development. But every pillar of progress, in whatever region, stands on mass poverty – what a politician once described as a state of a few millionaires on the shoulders of millions of beggars. The recent conflict also speaks of the failures of post-colonial governments to meet these challenges.
thanks Moorish Girl for the link
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